Paul Bass Photos
A spiritually endowed corner of Newhallville got two new names Sunday, with one message.
The naming took place at the corner of Dixwell Avenue and Thompson Street, where Mount Hope Temple has stood as an anchor for over 70 years.
Two men have led the congregation there — and led renewal efforts elsewhere in the neighborhood and in town — for over 60 of those years. They were the late Bishop Jeremiah Covington, and his son-in-law and successor Bishop John C. Wright.
With the help of their alder, Brenda Foskey-Cyrus, more than 800 people touched by the pair’s ministry petitioned the city to rename the corner after them. The city passed a law to do just that. So on Sunday Wright, Mayor Toni Harp, and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro pulled two strings to uncover two separate signs placed across the street from each other: One signifying Bishop John C. Wright Corner, the other Bishop Jeremiah Covington Corner.
Emcee Michael Smart, New Haven’s city clerk (and Wright’s son-in-law), said the new sign will convey a message to people passing by every day: To ask: “Are we doing everything we can to do to make our lives right and make our contribution?
Harp (pictured with Wright) told a crowd that gathered for the celebration that the two signs will enable New Haven to remember “these two religious leaders, champions of racial harmony and civic responsibility,” the way that Whalley and Dixwell Avenues and Goffe Street remind us of the three “regicide” judges who played an historic role in our city.
Newhallville State Sen. Gary Winfield (pictured with Newhallville State Rep. Robyn Porter) cited one example of many of the lives enriched by these two men — that of Dinah Kenney, a parishioner who became pregnant at 16. Bishop Covington told her he wasn’t going to give up on her. He told the congregation after she graduated high school that “‘when Dinah goes to law school, this church will give her $1,000.” Kinney did go to law school. Covington had passed away by then; under Wright the congregation kept the promise. Today she is not only an attorney, but the spouse of Mount Hope Temple’s new interim pastor, Robert Kinney. (Click here to read a story about a public hearing on the corner naming, where she told that story.)
In addressing the crowd, Wright quoted a spiritual: “May the work I’ve done speak for me.” No one present doubted that it has.
